It's quite typical for all the modern smartphone platforms that they come with their own market places, doesn't matter if it is Apple's iOS, Google's Android or HP Palm's webOS and Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 isn't anything different. However, there are differences about how customers can access and search these market places. For sure, all platforms allow access from the mobile device itself while others, like Apple's iTunes or Microsoft's Zune provide access to the market places from dedicated PC applications. And while HP Palm is also offering a web frontend, Google is yet not providing an official access from the PC to its Android Market but it's only rumored that it's coming soon.

Nevertheless, there are good reasons to have access to the mobile market places from a web browser as well and today, a new site launched called Marketplace Browser.

Marketplace Browser provides a basic but still handy access to Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. It allows to search for applications or browse through the different categories. It shows the app descriptions as well as it provides preview screen shots. However, it's yet not differentiating between free and pay apps and it's also not showing user ratings. Furthermore, it still requires Microsoft's Zune software to install applications on a Windows Phone 7 device.

Anyway, Marketplace Browser is an interesting tool for new Windows Phone owners to discover new applications as well as it allows potential upcoming Windows Phone 7 customers to browse through the Marketplace catalogue.